Author: pfairley

Peter Fairley is one of North America’s foremost energy and technology journalists. As an author and contributor to MIT’s Technology Review magazine and Spectrum, flagship journal of the IEEE, he is a sought-after commentator on innovation and the environment. Before taking up independent writing Peter served as Washington Bureau Chief for Chemical Week, chronicling the global chemical industry’s collision with the environment. Peter has been a guest of NPR’s Science Friday and CBC Newsworld and has spoken on energy innovation to university, professional and business organizations. He holds a B.S. in molecular biology, a Masters in science and environmental reporting from New York University, and is active member of the Society of Environmental Journalists.

Bangladesh hosts the world’s largest collection of off-grid solar energy systems. Rooftop panels and batteries electrify over 4 million households and businesses there. Dhaka-based startup ME SOLshare believes it has the technology to link these systems and foster a solar energy-sharing economy. If the company succeeds, home systems will morph into village minigrids, offering wider access to more power at lower cost. Continue reading “Swarm Electrification in Bangladesh”

By driving smarter, autonomous cars have the potential to move people in and around cities with far greater efficiency. Their projected energy performance, however, has largely ignored their energy inputs, such as the electricity consumed by brawny on-board computers. First-of-a-kind modeling shows that autonomy’s energy pricetag could be high enough to turn some into net energy losers.

Wind-swept fires that killed more than 40 people in California have jolted the state’s biggest utilities, Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) and Southern California Edison (SCE). State regulators and trial lawyers are probing the utilities’ tree trimming and line maintenance — common culprits in prior California fires. But they also examining a utility device that produces sparks by design: automatic circuit reclosers.

Relations between the United States and Mexico are strained as President Donald Trump pushes his promised border control wall and demands a U.S.-favored rewrite of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). But Mexico and the southwestern states that border it continue building an international agenda for electricity. The region’s power players plan to complete a first set of projects before Trump’s term is up that will make the border far more electrically-porous.

It’s moving day at the Legislative Assembly of British Columbia on a sunny summer morning in Victoria, Canada, and climate scientist-turned politician Andrew Weaver is battling to retain an expansive leather sofa for his new basement office. Just a few weeks earlier, in May 2017, thousands of people in and around Victoria cast their votes for the British Columbia Green Party, which Weaver leads, growing the caucus from his one lonely seat to three. The wide sofa, he explains, will be crucial during long nights of debate and voting. “This is the one you can sleep on. And we need that.” Three seats in an 87-seat legislature might sound modest, but it’s enough to make Weaver — a professor at the University of Victoria — into a political kingmaker. The incumbent Liberal Party and the opposition New Democratic Party each garnered fewer than half of the seats, giving Weaver’s Green Party the balance of power. Weaver exercised his new-found influence in the weeks after the election to remove Christy Clark, the Liberal premier of British Columbia, who had championed fossil fuels, and to install a new government under climate-friendly terms. Now US researchers are daring to dream that they too can follow in Weaver’s footsteps, and tilt the political balance. … READ ON AT NATURE.COM

The world’s first wind farm employing floating turbines is taking shape 25 kilometers off the Scottish coast and expected to begin operating by the end of this year. Atmospheric scientists at the Carnegie Institution for Science argue that the ultimate destination for such floating power farms could be hundreds of kilometers out in the open ocean. Their simulations, published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, show that winds over the open ocean have far greater staying power than those over land.